Historical Sociology of 1791 St. Domingue: Social Structure, the Sugar Revolution and Globalization

Envisioning chattel slavery and the social order that developed around it is something that I admit is an incredibly hard thing to do despite Hollywood's commitment to portraying our suffering on screen as an excursion in farming, a romantic sojourn towards a more perfect union and the perfection of Western civilization, and the occasional beating or two. As much as I try to distance myself emotionally from the idea, in order to intellectualize and analyze St. Domingue, and other examples of colonial violence, I often feel like I am doing the subject's horror, intensity, and violence – stone cold violence – a woeful disservice. In order to assuage those feelings I want to make it clear that what I have written below, in my own estimation, is a rough, amateur attempt at describing the worst condition of a human population in the history of this planet (both enslaved and enslaver). Any description of the conditions of St. Domingue’s slavocracy must begin with an exposition of its brutality because it was this brutality that laid the foundation for the colonies wealth and geopolitical importance. St. Domingue was a part of the core of a complex power constellation of the burgeoning world-system of the late 18th-century, which includes imperial Western Europe, Indigenous America, and a number of African states. The Sugar Revolution developed a complex, vicious skin-color based social structure that in dynamic ways maintained the savage relations of production that placed St. Domingue, and its soul, Black folks at the center of a burgeoning Atlantic world-system. How can we understand the dynamics happening within the island and outside of it to illustrate the specific complexity of St. Domingue and that of the general Atlantic world-system in the late 17th century into the 1700s ?

The Sugar Revolution, a socio-economic transformation initiated with the introduction of sugar cultivation to European colonies in the Caribbean in the late 17th century, had three primary effects on the emergent Atlantic world-system. First, as a commodity, the addictiveness of sugar drove its market expansion, creating an enormous demand that made sugar cultivation more profitable than other cash crops. The production of sugar is said to have been so profitable that planters reasoned that using land for food cultivation in colonies like Barbados, Cuba, Jamaica and St. Domingue instead of growing sugar would be a waste of land. This sugar monoculture changed the geographical landscape of the islands and transformed the farms into large plantations with a plantation elite. Moreover, the labor demand of sugar promoted the importation of African slaves because of the dangerous conditions that came with its mass cultivation and prompted the 18th century to be the highest in regards to the importation of African labor, thus drastically changing the demographics of the colonies.

St. Domingue stood right in the middle of this transformation and soon worked up to being the most profitable colony in the Caribbean. To put the surplus value of the colony into perspective, scholars report that St. Domingue supplied the United States with all of the sugar and molasses it imported. (Hickey, 1982, p. 362) Historians recognize “the St. Domingue of 1789” as being the “world’s richest sugar colony.” (Baur, 1970, p.406) Efforts subsequent to the initial success of the offensive lead to the slowing down of production, being that Blacks were not being forced to work day-in and day-out in the fields. Historians quip that “the competition of St. Domingue’s renowned sugar had been removed and Hispaniola had suffered economic collapse, despite the efforts of L'Ouverture to reorganize labor and renew production” (Baur, 1970).

St. Dominique was an incredible economic power. Thus, it played a pivotal role in the power constellations of the various power groups involved. Donald R. Hickey reports that by 1791 it was the largest producer of sugar, grossing 177,000,000 pounds annually and 74,000,000 pounds of coffee annually while also accounting for half of the slaves in the Caribbean. On the eve of the French Revolution, trade with St. Domingue accounted for a third of France’s external commerce, employing 1,282 ships manned by some fifteen thousand sailors. (Hickey, 1982, p366). When food stopped coming to New Orleans in 1791 near starvation resulted in Louisiana which was saved by the arrival of a thousand barrels of flour swiftly shipped from Philadelphia (Bauer, 1970).

This wealth came at an incredible expense. Life in the 18th century St. Domingue was more than brutal; more than savage. Its brutality is represented by the fact, as asserted by Fick “the slave population of Saint Domingue never reproduced itself” attributing the reasons to “the conditions and economic relations of slavery itself.” In fact, Fick references d’Auberteuil in that he “estimated the working life of an average plantation slave who was born in the colony to be little more than fifteen years, and it was certainly no longer than that for creolized Africans who had survived the initial years.” She summarizes that “slave mortality … was a matter of overwork, undernourishment, and the absolutism of the masters” (Fick, 1990).

The grueling, round-the-clock maintenance of the sugar crop, and the savage tactics used to compel the enslaved caused a loss of life and spirit the likes of which has scarcely been seen in the history of the world. Fick draws the correlation between the cultivation of the sugar crop and the insanity being wreaked upon Afrikan people succinctly. She says “by far the most intense utilization of the slaves labor was on the sugar plantations, where, during the harvest and grinding season, an ordinary workday could easily average eighteen to twenty hours. Because of the nature of sugar production, work on the sugar plantations was virtually nonstop and followed a nearly complete twenty four hour schedule.” (Fick, 1990)

The introduction of sugar cultivation came to St. Domingue in the 18th century and the population statistics drastically changed. By the late 1780s St. Domingue was the largest colony in the Caribbean, with a population of 40,000 whites, 28,000 free blacks and mulattoes and 452,000 Afrikan slaves. Most of the Afrikans of the island were not born on the island and came from various places including other Caribbean slave islands or places on the Afrikan continent. The whites were split between a mostly male managerial class that managed the large sugar plantations and the owning agrarian bourgeoisie in France. How did 68,000 people control 452,000 ? A part of the answer to that question is they didn’t. The Offensive in 1791 was the result of a constant resistance by enslaved Afrikans, developing an expression of the Afrikan asilic core towards its collective tendency, to the slave-owning elite, that ultimately arrived at a conclusion of irreconcilability, that can be traced to the maroon heritage and socio-political dynamics within the Afrikan continent that finally reconciled the inability of Afrikans to peacefully coexist separately with colonial capitalism because of its expansive rapacity.

In dissecting the social structure and components of St. Domingue we must be careful to stay away from oversimplification and get as close to the complexity as possible. The documentation leads us away from the perception of the 1791 offensive as a black-and-white brawl between the 500,000 enslaved and the whites. The nature of St. Domingue society, and French style colonialism was simply much more complex. Gruner reports on the “unbelievably subtle classificatory differences” that were “based on skin color” and included “no fewer than 64 such categories.” Gruner summarizes the system in that,

“Each and every one of these [skin color categories] had a corresponding name and the social status of each category of mixed-race person was – as was “logical” – directly proportional to the lightness of their skin. Some members of the mixed-race population were rich, to be sure, and sometimes this meant owning “darker” slaves. More than a few were educated as well and some had even studied in France.”

Additionally, Fick summarizes the complexities of the social dynamics of 1789 St. Domingue that “by 1789 nearly every sector of colonial society was in a state of unrest – slave against master, mulatto against white, ‘small’ white against ‘big’ white, both of the latter, at various times, against the local administration and especially the French bourgeoisie.” She goes on to explain that “... each group had its own grievances, and each represented particular interests arising out of the specific conditions and contradictions of class and caste, intertwined and confounded as they were by the colonial politics of race.” She rests on three major categories: Black, White, and Colored. We will pick up using this frame. Despite being a simplification in and of itself, this is far removed from the popular interpretation of St. Domingue demographics. The first group that we will discuss are the Afrikans, because we made up the largest population in the colony as well as provided the labor power and agricultural technicality that was fundamental to the colony’s wealth.

The Blacks were split into two primary groups: enslaved bossales (those born on the continent of Africa), enslaved creoles (those born in the Caribbean), and maroons. The backbreaking work of sugar cultivation called for a very low life-expectancy rate. The slave owning elite reasoned that it was more profitable to work a slave to death, in order to extract as much labor value as possible and import more. Needless to say, a large percentage of the Black population were bossales, which of course meant they imported their national identities, cultures, and technical skills. Thus, the Africans imported systems of personnel valuation and our own particular conceptual power hierarchies. Much of these skills included agriculture, warfare, and state administration. In fact, Thornton recognized that the “national units” – that is, fighting units – “were composed of veterans of African wars.” The Afrikans while traversing national boundaries, were also organized by proximity to power within the slavocracy. Buggy-drivers, domestic workers, and slave-drivers were all critical roles in the coordination of the enslaved for the offensive, dating back to the times of the Mackandalist traditions where house servants were the primary social force used for resistance.

It is important to counter the narrative that a lot of scholars posit that the “Haitian Revolution” was an outgrowth of the French Revolution and the corresponding ideals. While the French Revolution did have some effect, the tradition of resistance to slavery and racial oppression has the same beginning date as the efforts to enslave. In other words, African people did not need the French Revolution to get ideas of liberty, sovereignty, and self determination as a race-class entity within their grasp. Our earliest forms of resistance crystallized in the advent of maroon settlements from which raids, attacks and perpetual warfare were enacted upon the mainstream colony. Geggus reports of a colonist who in 1785 wrote from Cap Francais of the “number and boldness of maroons” and that such complaints were as “old as the colony” (Geggus, 1992, p. 25) Geggus also goes on to cite that the “areas where maroon bands were said to be present on the even of the revolution were not those were the slave revolt broke out and in fact were generally those parts of Saint Domingue where the slave regime was to suffer least.” This leads to the idea that the role and meaning of maroonage needs to be studied more in depth. They do, however, at the very least point to a genesis of African resistance to colonization and dehumanization that goes beyond the French Revolution.

Understanding the national and cultural diversity of the Africans is crucial in establishing the 1791 Offensive as a pivotal moment and process through and around which the collective tendency of the Afrikan Asili, or pan-Africanism, began to coagulate. The Africa-born bossales were sourced from different nations and regions on the Afrikan continent. Power relations between Afrikan polities was volatile within the Triangular Trade, and they were brought into contact with one another. – sometimes peacefully and sometimes not. Different language groups, peoples from different regions and diverse lineages came into forced contact. Fick, among other scholars, describes the different groups as,

“The first arrivals in the sixteenth century came chiefly from the region and outlying areas of Senegal on the upper west coast and were generally of the Islamic faith. From there, European slavers moved southward during the seventeenth and especially eighteenth centuries along the west coast toward the Gulf of Guinea, where they replenished their supplies in human cargo. Here in the Ivory Coast, the Gold Coast (Ghana), and the Slave Coast (roughly, Togo, Benin, and a part of western Nigeria) were to be found some twenty-five nations or tribes, including Dahomeans, Aradas, Hausas, Ibos, Yorubas, Minas, Miserables, and Bourriqui, among many others. A third and equally important regional grouping of slaves came from the kingdoms of the Congo and Angola, south of the equator, and even, to a significant degree after 1773, from Mozambique on the east coast of Africa. In general, one can safely say that by the latter part of the eighteenth century these last two regional groupings, whose belief systems and patterns of thought were essentially animistic, not only represented the vast majority of the slaves introduced into the colony, but also constituted their overall cultural framework, wherein voodoo, that most vital spiritual force in the slave culture of Saint Domingue, derived its distinctive characteristics.”

Thornton, quoting Geggus, asserts that in the 1780s “Congos” made up 90 percent of the slaves in the North Province, “where the revolution began, and about the same percentage in the south.” (Thornton, 1993,p. 185) Thornton asserts that “Kongo might be seen as a fount of revolutionary ideas as much as France” being that the civils wars within late 18th century Kongo were fought to “resolve constitutional issues and determine who was the king of Kongo and what were his powers” (Thornton, 1993, p. 186). In other words, diverse groups brought their ideological particularities and contexts to mix with their reality of slavery. It is common, historians say, for the Blacks to have organized primarily by national grouping. Gruner documents the diversity amidst the Africans in that they belonged to “ten or twelve different ethnic groups, and they spoke even more languages.”

Being such a large part of the population it is important to keep african people at the center of the discussion as cultural influences. So often, the faceless and nameless “slave” in the popular narrative of Maafa becomes known only as a woeful exploited worker who was not privy to the American Dream. The two often overlooked aspects of Africans in the Atlantic world-system is our resistance and technical contributions. In actuality, the culture and customs of enslaved African people has contributed to the civilizational development of their enslaver’s nation in technical, aesthetic and ethical ways. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, in an exposition of French-style colonialism in French Louisiana, instructs us about the “acculturation process” that she describes as “a mutual exchange of knowledge, perceptions, and techniques” which was “an exchange in which Africans … were often more influential than whites.”

The whites, consisting of the property owning agrarian bourgeoisie who mostly resided in France, also known as the grand blancs, and the poor petit blancs (vagabonds deported from Europe with only their labor to sell and newfound whiteness to save face) were divided sharply along class lines but presented a unified front on the basis of their whiteness. Gruner explains that while the grand blancs were “conservative” and “supportive of the ousted French monarchy,” the petit blancs represented “a nationally confused and somewhat obscure community whose members included bandits, explorers of all persuasions, and fugitives.”

While historians report the grand blancs support of traditional monarchy they also report the growing dissatisfaction of the grand blancs with their supervising metropolis. Gruner argues that in 1791 some sectors of the “dominant class in St. Domingue” began to argue for secession from France because of a desire to “transform the colony into a refuge for [royalists] from all over the Caribbean.” In other words, the ruling elite of St. Domingue started their move towards self-government, a likely trend. Moreover, grand blancs slowly sought political and economic independence from France who, through the exclusif system, mandated that St. Domingue traded exclusively with France. This trade system required Saint-Domingue to sell 100% of her exports to France alone, and purchased 100% of her imports from France alone. The French merchants and crown set the prices for both imports and exports. The prices were extraordinarily in France’s favor, and in no way competitive with world markets. Similar to what Great Britain’s crown had forced onto the bourgeois slavocracy in North America.

It is important to note that this independence movement did not include the slaves, or the free people of color, who although aligned with the grand blancs politically and economically, were still facing social oppression. Those who were a party to the movement were avowed slave owners and their vision of a free Saint-Domingue was like the United States, a slave owning nation, albeit with aristocratic pretensions.

Gruner explains that in contrast to the grand blancs, and their aristocratic tendencies, the petit blancs embraced the ideals of the French Revolution that were summarized in the second line in the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens,” in that “the aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.” The petit blancs were in such opposition to the political and economic ideas of the grand blancs that it is reported they “organized several violent confrontations with the elite grand blancs.” Both of these groups together made up roughly 39,000 people of the population.

Finally, the systemically engineered buffer caste of the manumitted Coloreds, or affranchis, historically used in French colonial territories to refer to free people of color, particularly those of mixed ancestry. Since white women were scarce in St. Domingue. As a result of the brutality and inhumanity of St. Domingue, white men typically did not go to the colony to start families, but to let loose their freakish inhibitions, the end result of which being a group whose parentage consisted of white fathers and black mothers. owned a quarter of the slaves and a quarter of the land while making up less than 10% of the island's population. On French colonial methods Gwendolyn Midlo Hall explains that “concubinage between white men and slave women was extensive and was openly accepted by white women as well as by white men. There was a strong social consensus shared by white women and that the concubines and children of white men should be free” (Hall, 1992, p.240).

Despite being freed by their white, socially elite fathers, the affranchi enjoyed very little political, economic or social rights, despite being a well-to-do group. Gruner explains that the “mulattoes … were deprived of all their civil and political rights, although they could be required to serve three-year terms in the military.” He continues explaining their position within St. Domingue’s complicated social hierarchy by adding that “they were always subject to the whims of whites” especially the customarily poor, resentful petit blancs, and that “spontaneous massacres of mulattos were not infrequent” (Gruner, 2020, p. 88). Despite their freedom the affranchi, because of their African ancestry were afforded a great deal of indignity that served as a constant reminder of their inequality to the whites. Fick recounts that,

If the affranchis thought of themselves as equals, deference reminded them that, in social relations with the whites, they were still inferior. Should they invite a white to their house for dinner, they could not sit with that person at the same table. They were obliged by law to submit with utmost respect to the arrogance and contempt which whites not uncommonly displayed toward them. A mulatto who publicly struck a white person in retaliation, in self-defense, or for any other reason could ultimately (even though it rarely happened) be punished by having his right arm cut off … A free mulatto of le Cap was sentenced to three years on the public chain gang for having raised his hand against a white man who forcibly tried to remove a slave woman accompanying him on the road. Another free mulatto received the same sentence for causing a white man to fall off his chair when he threw a stone that broke the cross bar.”

In 1763 legislation was passed forbidding free people of color to hold any public office, or to practice law, medicine or certain privileged trades. Many of the affranchi resentful of their African heritage thought that working with the whites against the Blacks would further their social positioning. Fick explains that a slave hunting body, the marechaussee, was “composed exclusively of affranchi” because of their “superior capabilities in pursuing slave deserters.” Nevertheless, the whites viewed the affranchi, who had what the blacks did not – the ability to accumulate wealth – as a threat to both the political hegemony of the whites and the racial hierarchy of the colony, and thus to the system fo slavery itself.

The social structure of 1791 St. Domingue can be understood by looking at the legislation that governed the social interaction of the day. Each group is a complex mixture of diverse cultural origins, varying political and economic interests, and social tendencies that are difficult, yet consequential, in consideration of explaining St. Domingue's significance, primarily in terms of the Trans-Atlantic trade and its contribution to a more complex world-system. Moreover, what must not be understated is the brutality of the colonial mode of production of St. Domingue, and the labor and technical power of African peoples, struggling through oppression to fulfill the collective tendency of the Afrikan Asilic Core, is what made it the most important colony in the Atlantic World. Put differently, production was built and maintained, in tripart, by the coerced labor and technical ability of an enslaved multi-ethnic Afrikan majority (that must not be put on the periphery of the subject), a sadistic White minority divided and emerging from relations of feudal Europe, and a coloured (mulatto) and free black comprador bourgeoisie struggling to carve out an identity for itself. A brutality that outpaces my ability to confidently describe.